Leavenworth, WA

We're now here in Washington and staying busy as little beavers (oh wait, that's the wrong state).  Anyhow, here is the first of a series of posts I hope to make over the next couple of days.  It is a real joy to get to know Nathan better and to spend time with Emily and Nathan seeing some of what is available in WA.

The first place we went was a little town on the other side of the Cascades that is all made up in Bavarian style.  It was rainy when we got there, but the sun came out and we had a good time, getting some real German food for lunch.

 This is a shot of the road to Leavenworth.  It took a couple hours to get there, but we had good company and the time went by fast.

 The main intersection in town, looking right down this street (south) you can see the pretty line up of shops.

 Looking down the other street, to the east.

 Looking back up the street to the north, from the other end.  Lots of shops, and lots of good things to eat - like chocolate and cheese.

 In addition to the exposed timbers that gave the whole town a Bavarian feeling, most of the shops had murals painted on them - including the local Safeway and McDonalds.

 Beautiful benches as well, with pretty girls sitting on them.

 As well as rustic benches with manly guys taking a break from the shops.

Us, standing in front of the German eatery where we had lunch.  The food was quite good, and according to our tour leaders, fairly accurately German as well.  I will leave it to our hosts to maybe leave comments indicating what it was we ate.  I had a schnitzel, as did M.  I forgot what mom had, but I must say that I liked the Rot Kohl, but not the sauerkraut which the tour leader agreed was not so good, and we also liked the little dumpling-kind-of-thing.  All in all it was very good.

 Nathan in front of one of the shops, in which, it will surprise nobody, we spent a long time. 

 In another shop there were approximately 3,564,922 different styles of nutcrackers - including some Mormon missionary nutcrackers.  This is a mere sample of just one wall.  Amazing.